As recently as six years ago, three human diseases with similar phenotypes were mistakenly believed to be caused by a single genetic defect. The three diseases, Ataxia-telangiectasia, Nijmegen breakage syndrome, and an AT-like disorder are now known, however, to have defects in three separate genes: ATM, NBS1, and MRE11. Furthermore, new recent studies have shown now that all three gene products interact; the ATM kinase phosphorylates NBS1,1 which, in turn, associates with MRE11 to regulate DNA repair. Remarkably or expectedly, depending (...) on one's point of view, the similarity in disease phenotypes is evidently due to defects in a common DNA repair pathway. BioEssays 22:966–969, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Voigt's 1887 explanation of the Michelson-Morley result as a Doppler effect using absolute space-time is examined. It is shown that Doppler effects involve two wave velocities: (1) the phase velocity, which is used to account for the Michelson-Morley null result, and (2) the velocity of energy propagation, which, being fixed relative to absolute space, may be used to explain the results of Roemer, Bradley, Sagnac, Marinov, and the 2.7° K anisotropy.

We propose a new picture of nature in which there are only two fundamental universal constantsè ē (≡e/c) andh(≡ħ/c). Our theory is developed within the framework of a new four-dimensional symmetry which is constructed on the basis of the Poincaré-Einstein principle of relativity for the laws of physics and the Newtonian concept of time. We obtain a new space-light transformation law, a velocity-addition law, and so on. In this symmetry scheme, the speed of light is constant and is completely relative. (...) The new theory is logically self-consistent, and it moreover is in agreement with all previously established experimental facts, such as the “lifetime dilatation” of unstable particles, the Michelson-Morley experiment, etc. There is a difference relative to the usual theory, though, in that our theory predicts a new law for the Dopplerfrequency shift, which can be tested experimentally by measuring the second-order frequency shift. (shrink)

It is suggested that the existence of a preferred cosmological reference frame has a number of generally unrecognized implications which are by no means inconsistent with the assumptions and consequences of special relativity. Indeed, the assumption that there exists a cosmological fundamental reference frame for light propagation leads to an intelligible interpretation of relativistic effects and of the null observations of Michelson-Morley-type experiments. Hence all such experiments are impotent for the detection of any such fundamental frame, and it is (...) shown that this applies also to the ingenious coupled-mirrors experiment proposed by S. Marinov. Only astronomical observation allied to cosmological theory can reveal the existence of this frame. (shrink)

After reviewing the foundations of special relativity and the room left for rival theories, a set of nonrelativistic para-Lorentzian transformations is derived uniquely, based on (a) a weaker first principle, (b) the requirement that the transformations sought do not give rise to the clock “paradox” (in a refined version), and (c) the compliance of the transformations with the classical experiments of Michelson-Morley, Kennedy-Thorndike, and Ives-Stilwell. The corresponding dynamics is developed. Most of the experimental support of special relativity is reconsidered (...) in the light of the new theory. It is concluded that the relativity of simultaneity has so far not been tested. (shrink)

The Michelson-Morley result is described empirically by generalized Doppler equations. If the phase of a light wave is not invariant, in agreement with the quantum nature of light, special-relativistic kinematics need not be assumed. Einstein particle dynamics and Maxwell-Lorentz electrodynamics in a moving system are derived without assuming special-relativistic kinematics. An alternative explanation for the decay rate of moving radioactive particles is presented. The observation of a third-order Doppler effect may yield the velocity of the closed laboratory.

Summary: Responding to Laudan’s skeptical reading of history an influential group of realists claim that the seriously wrong claims past successful theories licensed were not really implicated in the predictions that once singled them out as successful. For example, in the case of Fresnel’s theory of light, it is said that although he appealed to the ether he didn’t actually need to in order to derive his famous experimental predictions—in them, we are assured, the ether concept was “idle,” “inessential,” “peripheral” (...) or worse. This view, developed by J. Worrall and P. Kitcher in the 1980s and subsequently supplemented by J. Leplin and by S. Psillos has received critical attention in the literature over the last decade, but more needs to be said on the subject—or so I suggest in this paper. I bring forward four converging argumentative lines to show how and why, from the days of Fresnel to at least the decade after the Michelson-Morley experiments, the ether functioned and was understood as an “essential” posit in physics. My first line draws Fresnel’s actual deployment of the ether concept and the way he and his circle understood the achievements of his theory. The second line draws is from epistemological assessments of surprising implication in theories and its impact on leading theorists in the last two-thirds of the century. The third line draws from discussions of the optical ether in end-of-century reports circa 1900. The fourth focuses on entrenched metaphysical assumptions that persisted in the practice of physics until the advent of special relativity. Pulling these four lines together shows, I think, why attempts at synchronic identification of sound theory-parts are bound to fail, and also how realists might try to meet the challenge this creates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John Dewey: The ChicagoYears GEORGE DYKHUIZEN DEWEYCAMETO CHICAGOin the summer of 1894 as head professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and left in January, 1905, to become professor of philosophy at Columbia University. During his Chicago years, Dewey's interests led him not only into the field of philosophy but also into that of education, and in each of these areas he acquired a retmtation which placed him (...) among the top thinkers in the country. His work in philosophy resulted in his being acclaimed, along with Charles S. Peirce and William James, as one of the three great founders of American pragmatism, and his achievements in education led to his being regarded as one of the country's most outstanding educational thinkers and a prime mover in educational reform. The University of Chicago was only four years old when Dewey arrived there, but already it had attained a high standing among the universities of the country. The main reason for this was that the University had set out to be not simply another college but a university, like the universities in Europe and like Johns Hopkins and Clark universities in this country. This meant that the graduate schools of the University were to be stressed and that a large part of the faculty was to devote itself exclusively to graduate instruction and research. The type of faculty member the University looked for "must be a teacher, but first and foremost he must be a scholar, in love with learning, with a passion for research, an investigator who could produce, and if what he produced was worthy, would wish to publish." ~ In the four years since its founding, the University had assembled one of the most outstanding faculties in the country, a faculty which included: T. C. Chamberlin in astronomy, Rolin D. Salisburg in geology, Albert Michelson in physics, Jacques Loeb in biology, J. M. Coulter in botany, Thorsten Veblen in political economy, Albion Small in sociology, Paul Shorey in Greek, J. H. Breasted in Egyptology, and R. G. Moulton in English. When Dewey came to the University, therefore, as head of the Department of Philosophy, this meant that he was to teach mostly graduate students, do research, and have associations with some of the most brilliant scholars in the country. These features of the new position had appealed strongly to Dewey when he was considering the offer to 1T. W. Goodspeed, A History of the University of Chicago. The First Quarter (Chicago: 1916), 201. [227] 228 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY become professor of philosophy at Chicago and were among the decisive factors in bringing him to the University. William Rainey Harper, president of the University, was in large measure responsible for its early successes. "Those massive buildings, millions of money, thousands of scholars and scores of teachers," wrote one of his admirers, "are a monument to the foresight, nerve, and ceaseless activity of W. R. Harper, a veritable Napoleon in the educational field." 2 Born July 26, 1856, Harper was three years older than Dewey and every bit as precocious. He received his A.B. degree from Muskingum College when he was fourteen; he entered Yale as a graduate student when he was seventeen and got his Ph.D. degree from there at the age of nineteen. Upon receiving his doctorate, he began a career teaching Hebrew first at the Baptist Union Theological Seminary in Chicago and then, in 1886, at Yale. Harper wrote extensively on theological matters and his views prompted an attack on his orthodoxy in 1888. He weathered the storm, however, and throughout his life was a staunch defender of liberal theological thought. Harper had tremendous vitality and enthusiasm, and these qualities, along with his scholarship, led to his appointment as first president of the University when it was founded in 1890. Harper and Dewey were to have close associations on the administrative level, and though many of these were to be pleasant and cordial, others turned out to be not so harmonious and led eventually to Dewey's resignation from the University. Though Harper was particularly concerned that a strong department of philosophy be established at the University, up to the time of Dewey's... (shrink)

Discusses the experiments of Aristotle, William Beaumont, Robert Norman, Stephen Hales, Konrad Lorenz, Galileo, Robert Boyle, Theodoric of Freibourg, Louis Pasteur, Ernest Rutherford, A.A. Michelson, E.W. Morley, F. Jacob, E. Wollman, J.J. Gibson, A.L. Lavoisier, Humphrey Davy, J.J. Thomson, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, J.J. Berzelius, and Otto Stern.

Since Leibniz's time, Cartesian mental causation has been criticized for violating the conservation of energy and momentum. Many dualist responses clearly fail. But conservation laws have important neglected features generally undermining the objection. Conservation is _local_, holding first not for the universe, but for everywhere separately. The energy in any volume changes only due to what flows through the boundaries. Constant total energy holds if the global summing-up of local conservation laws converges; it probably doesn't in reality. Energy conservation holds (...) if there is symmetry, the sameness of the laws over time. Thus, if there are time-places where symmetries fail due to nonphysical influence, conservation laws fail there and then, while holding elsewhere, such as refrigerators and stars. Noether's converse first theorem shows that conservation laws imply symmetries. Thus conservation trivially nearly entails the causal closure of the physical. But expecting conservation to hold in the brain simply assumes the falsehood of Cartesianism. Hence Leibniz's objection begs the question. Empirical neuroscience is another matter. So is Einstein's General Relativity: far from providing a loophole, General Relativity makes mental causation _harder_. (shrink)

The capability approach constitutes a significant contribution to social theory but its potential is diminished by its insufficient treatment of the social construction of meaning. Social meanings enable people to make value judgements about what they will do and be, and also to evaluate how satisfied they are about what they are able to achieve. From this viewpoint, a person’s state of wellbeing must be understood as being socially and psychologically co-constituted in specific social and cultural contexts. In this light, (...) the telos of ‘living well’ which is at the heart of Sen’s version of the capability approach is inadequate and must be modified to a telos of ‘living well together’ which includes consideration of the social structures and institutions which enable people to pursue individual freedoms in relation to others. The policy significance of the capability approach can be further strengthened by paying greater consideration to the political economy of policy decision-making processes and the ways in which conflicts and distributions of power are institutionalized. (shrink)

Autonomous Knowledge: Radical Enhancement, Autonomy, and the Future of Knowing motivates and develops a new research programme in epistemology that is centred around the concept of epistemic autonomy.

ABSTRACTThe seminal work of David Marr, popularized in his classic work Vision, continues to exert a major influence on both cognitive science and philosophy. The interpretation of his work also co...

Part intellectual autobiography and part exposition of complex yet contemporary economic ideas, this lively conversation with renowned scholar and public intellectual Kenneth J. Arrow focuses on economics and politics in light of history, current events, and philosophy as well. Reminding readers that economics is about redistribution and thus about how we treat each other, Arrow shows that the intersection of economics and ethics is of concern not just to economists but for the public more broadly. With a foreword by Amartya (...) Sen, this book highlights the belief that government can be a powerful force for good, and is particularly relevant in the current political climate and to the lay reader as well as the economist. (shrink)

In a recent and provocative paper, Matthew Fisher, Mariel Goddu and Frank Keil (2015) have argued, on the basis of experimental evidence, that ‘searching the internet leads people to conflate information that can be found online with knowledge “in the head”’ (2015, 675), specifically, by inclining us to conflate mere access to information for personal knowledge (2015, 674). This chapter has three central aims. First, we briefly detail Fisher et al.’s results and show how, on the basis of recent work (...) in virtue epistemology (e.g., Tiberius and Walker 1998; Roberts and Wood 2007; Tanesini 2016), their interpretation of the data supports the thesis that searching the internet is conducive to the vice of intellectual arrogance. Second, we argue that this arrogance interpretation of the data rests on an implicit commitment to cognitive internalism. Thirdly, we show how the data can be given a very different explanation in light of the hypothesis of extended cognition (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008) – one which challenges the extent to which Fisher et al. are entitled to insist that subjects are actually conflating access to knowledge for personal knowledge in the first place. We conclude by suggesting how, against the background of extended cognition rather than cognitive internalism, we have some reason to think that searching the internet might actually foster (in certain circumstances) virtuous intellectual humility. (shrink)

J.L. Chretien is a French public intellectual, philosopher and poet, widely published and revered in his home country and in academic circles worldwide. This translation makes his work available to an English-language audience for the first time and a crucial contribution to our understanding of the phenomenology of religious experience.

First published in 1952, British Empirical Philosophers is a comprehensive picture of one of the most important movements in the history of philosophic thought. In his introduction, Professor A. J. Ayer distinguishes the main problems of empiricism and gives a critical account of the ways in which the philosophers whose writings are included in this volume attempted to solve them. Editors Ayer and Raymond Winch bring together an authoritative abridgement of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding ; Bishop George Berkeley’s (...) Principles of Human Knowledge ; almost the entire first book of David Hume’s Treatise Concerning Human Nature ; and extracts from Thomas Reid’s Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man and John Stuart Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. (shrink)

In a recent and provocative paper, Matthew Fisher, Mariel Goddu and Frank Keil (2015) have argued, on the basis of experimental evidence, that ‘searching the internet leads people to conflate information that can be found online with knowledge “in the head”’ (2015, 675), specifically, by inclining us to conflate mere access to information for personal knowledge (2015, 674). This chapter has three central aims. First, we briefly detail Fisher et al.’s results and show how, on the basis of recent work (...) in virtue epistemology (e.g., Tiberius and Walker 1998; Roberts and Wood 2007; Tanesini 2016), their interpretation of the data supports the thesis that searching the internet is conducive to the vice of intellectual arrogance. Second, we argue that this arrogance interpretation of the data rests on an implicit commitment to cognitive internalism. Thirdly, we show how the data can be given a very different explanation in light of the hypothesis of extended cognition (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008) – one which challenges the extent to which Fisher et al. are entitled to insist that subjects are actually conflating access to knowledge for personal knowledge in the first place. We conclude by suggesting how, against the background of extended cognition rather than cognitive internalism, we have some reason to think that searching the internet might actually foster (in certain circumstances) virtuous intellectual humility. (shrink)

Burgess, J.P. and Rosen, G. Subject with No ObjectElliott, R.Faking Nature.

J. Krishnamurti was one of the most influential and widely known spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. Here, he inquires with the reader into how remembering and dwelling on past events, both pleasurable and painful, give us a false sense of continuity, causing us to suffer. His instruction is to be attentive and clear in our perceptions and to meet the challenges of life directly in each new moment.

Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philosophy. Among other accomplishments, his seminal book The Concept of Man in Early China influenced a generation of scholars. His rapprochement with contemporary cognitive and evolutionary science helped bolster the insights of Chinese philosophers and set the standard for similar explorations today. -/- In this festschrift volume, students of Munro and scholars influenced by him celebrate Munro’s body of work in articles that extend his (...) legacy, exploring their topics as varied as the ethics of Zhuangzi’s autotelicity, the teleology of nature in Zhu Xi, and family love in Confucianism and Christianity. They also reflect on Munro’s mentorship and his direct intellectual influence. Through their breadth, analytical excellence, and philosophical insight, the articles in this volume exemplify the spirit of intellectual inquiry that marked Donald Munro’s career as scholar and teacher. -/- . (shrink)

Gaston Fessard employs Hegel’s dialectical logic to clarify how St. Ignatius’s _Spiritual Exercises_ envisage and prepare the decisions and choices between contrasting options or major turning points in spiritual life, in moments of what Ignatius would call _Election_.

Hanlester Network v. Shalala ) marks the first test of the application of the Medicare-Medicaid anti-kickback statute to physician self-referral joint ventures. The most recent development in this ongoing litigation was the April 6, 1995 decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, holding the Hanlester Network vicariously liable for its marketing vice president's knowing and willful violation of the antikickback statute. The vice president had offered to pay physician-investors in order to induce their referrals of program-related business.The Hanlester Network (...) was a California general partnership comprised of corporations, clinical laboratories, and individual investors. In April 1987, it entered into a management agreement on behalf of the clinical laboratories with SmithKline BioScience Laboratories. (shrink)

The purported crisis and opportunity in liberal education may be approached via a reconsideration of the arts in liberal arts education. The advantage of such a view is that proponents of humanistic liberal education could speak in their own terms, while incorporating in a systematic way studies of ancient and modern liberal arts, addressing public questions of the value and substance of a liberal education. A plausible issue for consideration is whether the “arts” can address a crisis, its purported causes (...) and solutions, and the key role the humanities may have in building a renewed liberal arts education. At stake in the classroom is the realization of the possibilities, the intellectual freedom, which humans make for themselves in artistic making. This freedom differs from, but is complementary to, political freedom, the loadstone of standard liberal education defenses, because it is based in innovations and inventions of the arts and sciences, not in constitutions or politics of democracy. (shrink)